Young, gay and trying too hard
New research finds that male sexual minorities often compensate for stigma by overachieving
Topics: LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBT Rights, Gay Rights, homosexuality, Homophobia, Life News
In his memoir-cum-manifesto, Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino wrote of his college years, “I sensed these bodies knew other bodies the way I knew calculus or Shakespeare,” he said. “On Saturday nights, I would sit in my cement-block dorm room with my face lit green by my IBM’s glow, agonizing not over women, or men, but line breaks.” That’s because Yoshino was gay and in the closet — and, according to what’s known as the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis, perhaps overcompensating for the stigma he faced as a sexual minority.
This theory holds that closeted young men in bigoted environments often respond by overachieving in certain areas, like sports or academics — the idea being that it’s an adaptive means of finding a sense of self-worth where they can. It can also serve to distract from their sexuality: As Andrew Tobias wrote in his 1976 memoir, “The Best Little Boy in the World,” a key “line of defense” was his endless list of activities. “No one could expect me to be out dating … when I had a list of 17 urgent projects to complete,” he wrote.
Despite the prevalence of this idea in gay coming-of-age narratives, it’s never been tested empirically, until now. In a study recently published in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology, researchers interviewed 195 male colleges students who identified as either heterosexual or a “sexual minority.” They found that the sexual minority men based their sense of self-worth on “academics,” “appearance” and “competition” more so than the straight guys. Interestingly, the amount of time the gay men had spent hiding their sexual identity positively predicted their investment in these areas. The researchers also developed a way to objectively measure the amount of stigma each participant faced in their particular environment by evaluating their home state’s general stance toward sexual minorities. That measure of stigma also positively “predicted the degree to which young sexual minority men sought self-worth through competition.”
Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter and Facebook. More Tracy Clark-Flory.






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